I must be getting old…
When I first came to Spain, and specifically Almería, I remember the traditional bars with sawdust sprinkled across the floor. And I don’t mean a little decorative scattering of sawdust. In those days, the remnants of tapas, crumpled napkins and even the occasional cigarette end were casually dropped onto the floor, ready to be swept up at the end of the day.
Yes, people were still smoking indoors. It was only around twelve years ago, but sometimes it feels like another Spain entirely.
The bars were simple places.
Older men would gather around a table to play dominoes, drink coffee and often have a little brandy chaser on the side. When finished playing, they get on their aging scooters and wobble back down the road in the direction of home.
There were no menus offering fifteen different types of coffee. You had a café con leche or a cortado. That was about it.
And for someone like me, who didn’t drink dairy, finding coffee was a little more complicated.
I used to carry my own soy milk around in a metal hip flask.
I’m not even sure what was more unusual: asking for a coffee without milk or pulling a hip flask of soy milk out of my handbag.
Fast forward ten or so years and things have changed.
Walk into many bars and you’ll find a selection of coffee blends, sometimes beans from all over the world. There are choices of plant milk, usually soy or oat, and everything from a latte to an Americano. Ordering a coffee without dairy no longer requires quite so much explanation, or advance planning as it once did.
If you look closely, you can still find the traditional bars tucked away in the back streets. They may have lost the sawdust and, thankfully, the cigarette smoke, but some of the atmosphere remains.
And I rather like finding them.
There are still groups of the old boys sitting together, although perhaps fewer than there once were. These days, they might be gathered around a table outside on a patio, or even sitting together on a bench in the local park.
Spain changes, just as everywhere does.
I sometimes miss the old Spain. The simplicity of those bars, the dominoes, the familiar faces and the sense that life happened around the same few tables every day.
But I embrace the new Spain too.
Especially when it comes to plant milk.
After all, I no longer need to carry a hip flask of soy milk around with me.
Some things really have changed for the better.
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